Getting your export
Can I not just save everything to my camera roll instead?
Yes, and for a handful of memories it is the simplest thing there is. The problem is the number: with thousands saved, it is thousands of taps. The way around that is Snapchat's export, and that is where dates and locations disappear.
Straight answer first: the camera roll is an excellent place to keep your memories. It is in fact exactly where our finished archive is meant to end up. So the objection is right on the substance, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What decides whether it is practical is how many memories you have. Fifty of them you can save in a quarter of an hour without needing anybody. If you have several thousand, which is common after a few years of use, it is no longer a quarter of an hour. It is an evening or several, with the phone in your hand the whole time.
That is why most people use Snapchat's own export instead, and that is where the problem starts. The export does not put the original date inside the files. Dates and locations are included in the export, but in accompanying data next to the pictures rather than inside them. Your photo app only reads the file, finds no date, and uses the only thing it has: the day you downloaded the export.
The result is that several years of memories land on a single day in your timeline. Pictures from 2018 sit mixed in with yesterday's, in a pile of filenames like b8f2c1a9.mp4. Everything is still there, but nothing can be found.
That is the step we handle: we read the date and location out of the export's accompanying data and write them into the files, so that the archive works in Apple Photos and Google Photos like any other pictures. Then you put them in the camera roll, exactly as you intended.
So if you only have a handful of memories saved, you do not need us. Save them by hand and save the money.